During CT imaging, a subject to be imaged, e.g., a patient, usually is positioned on a support, such as a bed board and a head holder; therefore, the imaging data may comprise data for the support. However, the data for the support may be useless for a physician reviewing a CT image to diagnose a disease, or they may even get the physician into trouble.
Furthermore, during CT imaging of the head of a subject, a surview image (also known as scout image), which shows a lateral view of the head of the subject may be obtained and a user selects a region indicative of the head of the subject in the surview image, after which, further CT imaging may be performed on the selected region. In this procedure, a user needs to manually set a region of interest on the surview image, which may be time-consuming.
US 2012/219198 A1 discloses a method of selecting image data representative of a subject from an image data set comprises determining regions of image data, wherein each region of image data consists of a respective plurality of connected voxels, and selecting at least one region as being representative of the subject based upon at least one of the size and shape of the region.
US 2014/133726 discloses a method and system for automatically identifying two or more preselected anatomical features by examining pixels within images such as CT scanned images, determining appropriate measurements between such identified features. In at least one embodiment, the disclosed system can identify a first anatomical region in proximity to a basion, identify a second anatomical region in proximity to a dens, and measure the basion-dens interval (BDI).